The opening conference of the new project Support for networking and twinning at European level, funded by the European Union under the Cross-Border Programme Croatia-Serbia, was held in Subotica, SRB (5 December 2012) , organised jointly by the LDA-s Subotica and Osijek.
This project, that lasts 18 months, is carried out by LDA Osijek in cooperation with LDA Subotica in partnership with the Croatian Institute for Local Government – Hills, Evangelical Theological Faculty – ETF, Open University Subotica and ALDA.
The activities that will be organised during the 2013th start with the opening conference in order to establish resource centers and support the improvement of the administrative capacity of local governments in the border areas of Croatia and Serbia to build partnerships for European projects.
Participants of the conference were local authority and CSO representatives that were welcomed by Stanka Parać Damjanović, LDA Subotica, Miljenko Turniški – LDA, Jovan Jelić deputy head of the Osijek-Baranja county, Marta Dobo – City council member responsible for international and regional cooperation, Erika Kudlik – head of the Local Economic Development Office Subotica and Consul General of the Republic of Croatia, Dragan Djuric.
In addition to the presentation of the planned project activities and representation of experiences of the municipalities in inter-municipal cooperation, professor Mijat Damjanovic talked about the regional policy of the European Union, while professor Jovan Komsic presented the European standards of cross-border cooperation. Slobodan Martinovic from NGO Argument gave a presentation on decentralisation and local development coalition for democracy in Serbia.
Bojana Batalo from the Municipality of Ruma presented their experiences in project implementation and Snezana Milesevic from the Municipality of Apatin gave a presentation about the former and ongoing cross-border projects.